"The structure of 'Athena' can feel too pat, the culminating bout predictable. But to director Miller’s credit, that bout is a long, real-time slog up and down the piste, effortful and tough, and a little ugly...The play treats these girls and their ambitions with the seriousness they deserve...The twining of these characters and performances makes 'Athena' hugely appealing and stealthily moving...Parts of it cut so close to lived female experience, that they hardly feel like fiction at all."
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"This taut new play about precocious teen athletes is blessed with an exemplary cast...Miller guides Awe and Greer through a series of brief but meaty scenes that trace the girls’ relationship from strangers to competitors to sort-of friends. Gardner’s script skillfully employs teen drama stereotypes to first play into, then subvert audience expectations. The world of the play seems both highly specific and deeply relatable...A remarkably assured and insightful work."
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"Emma Miller’s production is a solid rendering but there is perhaps a deeper layer of Gardner’s work that does not completely rise to the surface. However, 'Athena' is time well spent with these vibrant, truthful characters...Awe and Greer do valiant work. They carry the burden of the rich text well and roll with the humor and the physicality of fencing. However, when the drama escalates at the end, their performances lack the buoyancy to lift the play to that final emotional crescendo."
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"Wily and entertaining...The two are precocious, preternaturally funny, and hyper-articulate. But the intense, quirky Athena complicates this combination with an underlying emotional opaqueness...This ambiguity is one of the play’s finer touches...Undermining this dry humor, though, is Gardner’s difficulty in filling in the girls’ outlines and differentiating their voices. At least when the inevitable showdown comes, Gardner adds an interesting twist."
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